In a breakthrough of sorts, Tata Advanced Systems has said it will assemble and sell armoured carriers to the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces. The unit in Casablanca that will assemble these amphibious vehicles will be the first foreign unit for an Indian defence manufacturer. The vehicle is said to be a versatile fighting machine and is likely to evince interest from other African countries. Most of Africa is currently dependent either on Russia or China for their defence equipment, and their supply is erratic. In this scenario, the Casablanca facility may emerge as a major export hub for the Indian company.
The deal is indeed a feather in India’s chequered defence production cap. It is a reminder that despite several strides in this sector, Indian continues to import 60-65 percent of its defence equipment. With a spending of over USD 70 billion, India was the world’s second largest arms importer in 2020, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This high import dependency has significantly contributed to our fiscal deficit. It is no wonder that we have been struggling for the last three decades to reverse the trend by boosting local production through indigenisation and opening up the sector to private players.
Over the last few years, the government’s Made in India drive has encouraged indigenous design, development and manufacture by increasing the number of defence items that cannot be imported. There have been many successful projects such as the light combat aircraft Tejas, artillery gun Dhanush and the intercontinental ballistic missile Agni V. The government has promoted private sector production too, issuing as many as 379 licences to 230 Indian companies. However, most of these have either been scrapped or are on the backburner, such as the Rs 8,000-crore light utility helicopter project and the Rs 32,000-crore bid to build minesweepers with South Korean support. At the moment, about 45 percent of all arms equipment is sourced from Russia; for the army, the dependence may be as high as 80 percent. This is one of the factors that has crimped our foreign policy. In our quest to be a strong nation, there is obviously no short cut to self-reliance in defence production.